Green Gates and The Green Man

In 2008, writing about honeysuckle and hummingbirds this was a picture of our back garden gate that leads to a larger garden area down wooden stairs.  This is what it looked like three years ago:

Unfortunately, we had some very cold winters that killed off the honeysuckle vines.  We took down the archway, cut back the dead branches, and were left with just the gate that looks bare and in desperate need of a face lift.

So I went looking for garden gates that were green in color, hoping to find something I liked and would inspire me to repaint the wooden gate.  Here are some pretty gates that I found while doing an internet search:

from madeitonmonday

 

from pinterest 

(from dreamstime)

Using oil paint from a tube, paint thinner and a linseed oil mixture with instructions here, this is our newly refurbished stained gate:

This is the gate yesterday prior prior to staining:

What a difference a little paint makes!

This is a Green Man, cast in iron, similar to one that I just ordered to attach to the fence:

The Green Man

...is that spirit, energy, presence, inherent in every cell of the vegetative realm, and transmitted to the animal/human realms through the foods we eat, the flowers we smell, the trees we hug. He is Pan.